Business Organizations Law Commons^™

Repeat Player Vs. One-Shotter: Is Victory All That Obvious, Bahaar Hamzehzadeh

UC Law Business Journal

This study tests Marc Galanter's theory in his work entitled Why the 'Haves' Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change. In his article, Galanter argues that classes of litigants with the greatest resources and the lowest relative risk in litigation have the highest rates of success in court. Galanter explains his theory by categorizing litigants as either repeat players or oneshotters. Repeat players consist of litigants who generally have the most resources and the lowest relative risk, and one-shotters consist of litigants who generally have the least resources and the greatest relative risk. To test his theory, …

The Governance Of Contemporary Sovereign Wealth Funds, Yvonne C. L. Lee

UC Law Business Journal

Recent contemporary sovereign wealth funds developments, viewed against the historical backdrop of international law and practice, particularly foreign investment law and practice, underscore the inter-action between economics, law and politics. This article first introduces the issues that have emerged as a result of sovereign wealth funds contemporary investments and observes how sovereign wealth funds and recipient countries have reacted to these developments. It proposes a model of sovereign wealth fund governance based on consultation, cooperation and coordination. This model draws on the experience of current deliberative fora such as the G20 summits and the International Working Group of Sovereign Wealth …

Every Rose Has Its Thorn: A New Approach To Deaccession, Andrew W. Eklund

UC Law Business Journal

In January 2009, Brandeis University announced that it planned to sell off the entire art collection of the Rose Art Museum. The purpose of this Note is to compare the situation at Brandeis against three previously-suggested methods of dealing with "deaccession," the sale of artwork by museums, and to suggest a fourth, hybrid approach to deaccession. The approach takes elements of the other models, and based on the American Association of Museum's Code of Ethics for Museums, proposes a new standard. Part I gives an overview of the American Association of Museum's Code of Ethics for Museums and a brief …

Lights, Camera, Sanction - Whether A Proposed Anti-Paparazzi Ordinance Would Limit Investigative Journalism In The News Business, Shelly Rosenfeld

UC Law Business Journal

While the value of paparazzi-driven journalism is very low, it would be a detriment to the public if paparazzi regulations would potentially limit, or even have a chilling effect on valuable investigative news, merely because there were similar ways the two acquired information. Certain newsgathering torts permit one to consider the newsworthiness, and hence public interest of the stories in question in evaluating the claim. Just as a driver who runs a red light on the way to visit a sick relative in the hospital has still broken the law, if a reporter breaks the more stringent regulations imposed on …

Evolution And Effectiveness Of Independent Directors In Indian Corporate Governance, Umakanth Varottil

UC Law Business Journal

The purpose of this Article is two-fold: (i) to identify the rationale for the emergence of independent directors by tracing their evolution in the U.S. and the U.K. where they originated; and (ii) to examine the transplantation of that concept into India with a view to evaluating the effectiveness of independent directors in that country. This Article finds that there are significant differences in the corporate ownership structures and legal systems between the countries of origin of independent directors on the one hand and India on the other. Due to the diffused shareholding structures in the U.S. and the U.K., …

Confusing Bundling With Tying Under Article 82 Ec: Batteries Included Or It Only Comes With Fries, Robert M. Schwartz

UC Law Business Journal

"Bundling" and "tying" are terms commonly used to describe business practices engaged in by undertakings at every level of economic power. In nine separate instances the Court of First Instance in its Microsoft Decision held that the Commission had established Microsoft Corporation's practice of "abusive bundling"(the first time a Community Court had used the term). The CFI also upheld the Commission's findings by indiscriminately referring to them as either "tying" or "bundling" and justifying the result because it "can be deduced both from the very concept of bundling and from the case-law...". Shortly after the Commission issued its Guidance on …

Four Key Elements To Successful Financial Regulatory Reform, Reza Dibadj

UC Law Business Journal

The most recent crisis on Wall Street presents our nation with an extraordinary opportunity to begin a conversation about the economic and social policies that have led to the financial meltdown we have witnessed over the past few years. In keeping with the timely and crucial theme of the Hastings Business Journal's 2009 Symposium, this Article does not chronicle the crisis, but rather focuses on the lessons it might hold in getting "beyond the bailout." To mitigate, or perhaps even avoid, future disasters I argue that policymakers should focus on remedying four pernicious facilitators to scandal: dissemination of untruthful or …

Restoring The Balance Of Power In Corporate Management: Enforcing An Officer's Duty Of Obedience, Megan Wischmeier Shaner

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

The Ifc's New Africa, Latin America, And Caribbean Fund: Its Worrisome Start, And How To Fix It, Christiana Ochoa, Patrick J. Keenan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In April 2010 the International Finance Corporation announced the creation of the African, Latin American, and Caribbean fund, a new co-investment vehicle funded largely with commitments from sovereign wealth and pension funds. The fund's objective was to draw on the IFC and the World Bank's strengths in emerging markets to identify and support enterprises that might not otherwise have come to the attention of large investors and thereby help strengthen the private sector and alleviate poverty in some of the world's poorest countries. Unfortunately the fund has, so far, proven a disappointment. It has invested only in large corporations that …

Corporate Political Speech: Who Decides, Lucian A. Bebchuk, Robert J. Jackson Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court spoke clearly this Term on the issue of corporate political speech, concluding in Citizens United v. FEC' that the First Amendment protects corporations' freedom to spend corporate funds on indirect support of political candidates. 2 Constitutional law scholars will long debate the wisdom of that holding, as do the authors of the two other Comments in this issue.3 In contrast, this Comment accepts as given that corporations may not be limited from spending money on politics should they decide to speak. We focus instead on an important question left unanswered by Citizens United: who should have the …

African-American Entrepreneurs: Integration, Education, And Exclusion, Cheryl L. Wade

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In this Article, I describe some of the subtle, obscure, and hidden challenges that African-American entrepreneurs face by providing the narratives of three African-American businesspeople. Two of the narratives are about African Americans who started businesses in the first half of the twentieth century. Theirs is a success story. Their businesses thrived. Yet, for a variety of reasons, the success these two entrepreneurs enjoyed would be unlikely today, even with the legislation and policy initiatives enacted in the latter half of the twentieth century and aimed at providing access to opportunities for people of color. The third narrative is …

Reply: Clawback To The Future, Miriam A. Cherry, Jarrod Wong

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In Clawbacks: Prospective Contract Measures in an Era of Excessive Executive Compensation and Ponzi Schemes (the “Article”), we undertook the task of proposing a doctrine of clawbacks that would not only furnish a framework for analyzing the term more systematically, but would also describe the ways the doctrine would relate to established rules of contract law. With his response, In the Shadow of the Omnipresent Claw: In Response to Professors Cherry & Wong (the “Response”), Michael Macchiarola has provided us with an opportunity to articulate these thoughts on the doctrine of clawbacks further, and for that opportunity and his …

Reading Stoneridge Carefully: A Duty-Based Approach To Reliance And Third Party Liability Under Rule 10b-5, Donald C. Langevoort

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Supreme Court's decision in the Stoneridge case has largely been interpreted as a imposing a strict, pro-defendant reliance requirement. This article offers an alternative reading that takes the Court's analysis more seriously than its overheated dicta, one that makes "remoteness" a serious and meaningful inquiry that can produce balanced and fair responses to the concern that seemed to motivate the search for restraint: fear of disproportionate liability. It explores the nature of the dispropotion, and suggests ways--using the Court's own explanatory tools--for deciding when third party involvement is close enough to the fraud so that fear of disproportion lessens. …

Corporate Power In The Public Eye: Reassessing The Implications Of Berle’S Public Consensus Theory, Marc T. Moore, Antoine Rebérioux

Seattle University Law Review

We analyze Berle’s overall corporate governance project in accordance with what we see as its four core sub-themes: (A) the limitations of external market forces as a constraint on managerial decision-making power; (B) the desirability of internal (corporate) over external (market) actors in allocating corporate capital; (C) civil society and the public consensus as a continuous informal check on managerial decision-making power; and (D) shareholder democracy (as opposed to shareholder primacy or shareholder wealth maximization) as a socially instrumental institution. We seek to debunk the popular misconception that Berle’s early work was a defense of the orthodox shareholder primacy paradigm …

Normative Justifications For Lax (Or No) Corporate Fiduciary Duties: A Tale Of Problematic Principles, Imagined Facts And Inefficient Outcomes, Rutheford B. Campbell Jr.

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Corporate Law In Preventing A Financial Crisis: Reflections On In Re Citigroup Inc. Shareholder Derivative Litigation, Franklin A. Gevurtz

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Back To The Future: Rediscovering Equitable Discretion In Trademark Cases, Mark P. Mckenna

Journal Articles

Courts in recent years have increasingly made blunt use of their equitable powers in trademark cases. Rather than limiting the scope of injunctive relief so as to protect the interests of a mark owner while respecting the legitimate interests of third parties and of consumers, courts in most cases have viewed injunctive relief in binary terms. This is unfortunate, because greater willingness to tailor injunctive relief could go a long way to mitigating some of the most pernicious effects of trademark law’s modern expansion. This Essay urges courts to reverse this trend towards crude injunctive relief, and to re-embrace their …

Freeze-Outs: Transcontinental Analysis And Reform Proposals, Marco Ventoruzzo

Faculty Scholarship

One of the most crucial, but systematically neglected, comparative differences between corporate law systems in Europe and in the United States concerns the regulations governing freeze-out transactions in listed corporations. Freeze-outs can be defined as transactions in which the controlling shareholder exercises a legal right to buy out the shares of the minority, and consequently delists the corporation and brings it private. Beyond this essential definition, the systems diverge profoundly.

This gap exists despite the fact that minority freeze-outs are one of the most debated issues in corporate law, in the public media, in a vast body of scholarly work …

Corporate Law In The Shanghai People's Courts, 1992-2008: Judicial Autonomy In A Contemporary Authoritarian State, Nicholas C. Howson

Articles

In late 2005 China adopted a largely rewritten Company Law that radically increased the role of courts. This study, based on a review of more than 1000 Company Law-related disputes reported between 1992 and 2008 and extensive interactions with PRC officials and sitting judges, evaluates how the Shanghai People's Court system has fared over 15 years in corporate law adjudication. Although the Shanghai People's Courts show generally increasing technical competence and even intimations of political independence, their path toward institutional autonomy is inconsistent. Through 2006, the Shanghai Court system demonstrated significantly increased autonomy. After 2006 and enactment of the new …

Organizational Liability And The Tension Between Corporate And Criminal Law, Miriam H. Baer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.